Platform Specific Issues

Linux Systems

The default key bindings for arrow keys in FVWM interfere with some of the arrow key bindings in NEdit, particularly, Ctrl+Arrow and Alt+Arrow. You may want to re-bind them either in NEdit (see Customizing -> Key Binding in the Help menu) or in FVWM in your .fvwmrc file.

Some older Linux distributions are missing the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB file, which is necessary for running Motif programs. When XKeysymDB is missing, NEdit will spew screenfulls of messages about translation table syntax errors, and many keys won't work. You can obtain a copy of the XKeysymDB file from the contrib sub-directory of the NEdit ftp site.

SGI Systems

Beginning with IRIX 6.3, SGI is distributing a customized version of NEdit along with their operating system releases. Their installation uses an app-defaults file (/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults/NEdit) which overrides the default settings in any new nedit version that you install, and may result in missing accelerator keys or cosmetic appearance glitches. If you are re-installing NEdit for the entire system, just remove the existing app-defaults file. If you want to run a newer copy individually, get a copy of the app-defaults file for this version the contrib sub-directory of the ftp site for this version, and install it in your home directory, or set XAPPLRESDIR or XUSERFILESEARCHPATH to point to a directory and install it there. In all cases, the file should be named simply NEdit.

No additional installation or resource settings are necessary on IRIX systems before 6.3

HP-UX Systems

If you are using HPVUE and have trouble setting colors, for example part of the menu bar stubornly remains at whatever HPVUE's default is, try setting: 

nedit*useColorObj: False

IBM AIX Systems

Due to an optimizer bug in IBM's C compiler, the file textDisp.c must be compiled without optimization on some AIX systems.

Solaris (SunOS 5.3 and beyond) Systems

The nedit_solaris executable may require the environment variable OPENWINHOME to be set to the directory where Open Windows is installed. If this is not set properly, NEdit will spew screenfulls of messages about translation table syntax errors.

On Solaris 2.4 add -DDONT_HAVE_GLOB to the CFLAGS line in Makefile.solaris.

Solaris 2.5 systems were shipped with a bad shared Motif library, in which the file selection dialog (Open, Save, Save As, Include, etc.) shows long path names in the file list, but no horizontal scroll bar, and no way to read the actual file names. Depending on your system, the patch is one of # 103461-07, # 102226-19, or # 103186-21. It affects all Motif based programs which use the library. If you can't patch your system, you might want to just try the nedit_sunos executable , which is statically linked with a good Motif. You can also set the X resource nedit.stdOpenDialog to True, which at least gives you a text field where you can enter file names by hand.

If you're experiencing performance problems on Solaris 2.6 (windows come up slowly), the patch for Sun's shared Motif library is # 105284-04. Installing the patch alone will improve nedit's performance dramatically. The patch also enables a resource, *XmMenuReduceGrabs. Setting this to True will eliminate the delay completely.

SunOS 4.x Systems

On some SunOS systems, NEdit will also complain about translation table syntax errors. This happens when Motif can't access the key symbol database, usually located in the file /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB. If this file exists on your system, but NEdit fails to locate it properly, you can set the environment variable XKEYSYMDB to point to the file. If you can't find the file, or if some of the errors persist despite setting XKEYSYMDB, there is a XKeysymDB which you can use to update or replace your /usr/lib/X11/XKeysymDB file available in the contrib sub-directory of the NEdit ftp site.

If you don't want to change your existing XKeysymDB file, make a local copy and set XKEYSYMDB to point to it. If you find that some of the labeled keys on your keyboard are not properly bound to the corresponding action in NEdit, try the following:

  1. Get a copy of motifbind.sun (for Sun standard keyboards), or motifbind.sun_at (for Sun PC style keyboards) from the NEdit contrib directory on the ftp site
  2. Copy it to a file called .motifbind in your home directory.
  3. Shutdown and restart your X server.

MacOS X

A MacOS X version of the nedit Makefile is supplied in the source code makefiles directory called Makefile.macosx. To build nedit from source use make macosx. Moreover, NEdit.org provides a pre-built binary.

MS Windows

The NEdit port under Microsoft Windows is not a real port in the Windows environment. It simply uses the Cygwin environment. There are two approaches of how to run NEdit on MS Windows:

  1. You install Cygwin with the X option from the cygwin site. There is an installer program that does the job. What this approach means is that you install a complete Unix and X emulation on top of Windows and fortget about the underlying operating system. Then running NEdit is exactly the same as on a Unix system. There is pre-built binary provided by the Cygwin/X project that you can install with the Cygwin installer or you can get a pre-built binary from NEdit.org. Just install it as on Unix. After you invoke bash, you startx and type nedit& into an Xterm. You can also build NEdit from sources. In this case make sure to meet the build requirements, especially you need the X headers and LessTif.
  2. Although there is no real port of NEdit to MS Windows, there is an installation package available that achieves almost the same as a real port. This package uses the facts that one doesn't need to install the whole Unix emulation and that one can use any X server for MS Windows different from Cygwin/X, thereby fully integrating NEdit into MS Windows. Notice that there is no support for this package from the NEdit project. For possible problems with this package, please contact the maintainer.

OS/2

There is a private page of one of the NEdit developers about the OS/2 port.